25 January 2020

The Healy Wing of St Vincents Hospital Melbourne is rather special, love the way the bricks grade up in colour from dark to light (only one other bldg in a Melb I know of does that), and the top levels step back, giving a bit of a NY skyscraper silhouette, though the style isn’t quite Art Deco, in fact impossible to pin down, there’s #Deco-ish brick detailing, but lots of arches too, a bit Mediterranean? Prob based on something in the US that Arthur Stephenson saw on a trip looking at hospitals in 1926-7, when he decided (for some reason) that’s what his firm should specialise in. It was first designed in 1928, when the foundation stone was laid, but not built 1931-34, in stages as they raised the $, and a bit different to and shorter than the 28 design. Better I think. The 1934 photo shows that it had lots of open balconies now glazed in.

Update July 2022:

Leafing through one of my New York books, saw the entry to the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, upper west side, started 1924, completed 1928 – a match ! Same low arches and window arrangement, and in brickwork. But the rest is very skyscrapery, it’s huge ! Ours is a bit prettier, with the bricks shading from dark to light.

And lastly the graded brick idea might have also come from New York; 55 Central Park West was competed in 1929.

Around 1929 Stephenson designed the Jessie McPherson wing of the Queen Victoria Hospital, then on the corner of William and Little Lonsdale, opened 1931, same kind of arch, but it was actually much more Deco. It was demolished in the 90s, now the County Court.

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